Peter DavidsonPeter brings over twelve years of marketing experience for both a professional services firm and a large non-profit organization. Peter has built successful permission email marketing systems, word of mouth marketing programs and has built communities of interest around a variety of topics using blogs. He currently writes for three blogs on marketing, branding, design and technology.

Blog Ecosystems

The Value of Listening to the Conversations about You

PR Guru Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion has a great piece that makes the case for why it has become extremely valuable for marketers to listen and participate in the exploding blogsphere.

He recounts the PR spectacle of the Kryptonite lock after it was discovered that a simple ball point pen could unlock these well known high security bike locks. Steve talks about how companies who keep their ear to the ground and routinely scan the blogsphere for mentions of their company/product or competitors can respond and react to potential bad PR situations before they explode and get picked up by mainstream media.

The piece concludes with recommendations for tools like Technorati and Feedster among others that help businesses listen in to the ongoing conversations that may included their brands and products.

Not only is it becoming critical to listen to the conversations customers are having about your business it is also valuable to participate in the conversations. We're not talking C&D happy lawyers we're talking commenting on blogs and discussion boards and starting a corporate blog of your own. Having your own blog creates another channel to initiate a conversation with customers and prospects. The blogshere is not something you can control but positive and negative messages can be influenced by being forthcoming and responsive to the conversations occurring around you.